Advanced Material Editor
The Advanced Material Editor allows the user to control many specific characteristics of their material. It is organized into four tabs.
Contents
Main Tab
Color - set the color or materials without a texture.
Reflective Finish and Highlight' The two sliders combine to define the amount of reflection and the sharpness of reflection.
Highlight Color
- Metallic - highlight are reflected in the color of the reflective material.
- White - highlights are in White
- Custom - highlights are in a custom color.
- See: Metallic Reflection
Glossy - highlights are other reflections are blurry.
- See: * Glossy Reflection
Intensity of the reflection. 1.000 is fully reflective.
Sharpness - values less than 1.000 create blurry reflections
Fresnel - sets the amount of Fresnel Reflection .
- The Fresnel setting is useful for glossy materials, not transparent ones.
- The Fresnel setting affects only reflective materials. It controls an effect known as fresnel reflection of conductors. If your material is not 100% transparent, then this setting may come into play
- Fresnel reflectivity of conductors models the tendency of many materials to become more specular (mirror-like) at glancing angles, while retaining more matte properties at perpendicular viewing angles.
See also
Transparency Tab
The Transparency tab of the Advanced Material Editor controls a number of different properties associated with light passing through a material.
- Intensity. This affects how transparent the material is.
- IOR. Index Of Refraction determines both the reflectivity of the material and how refractive it is. Controls the amount that light is distorted as it passes through thick glass.
- The higher the IOR, the less transparent and the more reflective the glass is. Lower values of IOR will result in more light on the inside.
- Translucency. This is a measure of diffusion. High translucency produces a "sandblasted" effect, since more light is scattered randomly through the material. Allows light to pass through the material, but not visibility - as with a lamp shade.
- Attenuation. This is a measure of the loss of intensity of light as it passes through the material. Sunglasses, for example, have a high attenuation.
- Dispersion. This controls how much light is split into its component wavelengths.
- Saturation. This determines the amount of dispersion.
- No Daylight Portal. This checkbox prevents the material from becoming a source of sunlight for an interior rendering.
- Glow. This creates the illusion of illumination. Sets Self Glow - the face glows, but does not illuminate other surfaces.
Texture Tab
The Texture Maps tab contains a number of options for altering textures as well as an ordered list of the maps being used. The controls for adding and removing maps, as well as re-ordering them, are at the top of this list.
The four tabs below the map list are:
- Main. Controls for the scale of the tiling, replacing the current map, and changing the map type, are located here. Depending on the choice of map type, there are additional controls. For standard maps, the user is able to set Strength (how clear the texture is) and Bump, which uses the map's gradient to create the appearance of depth. Normal maps only have a bump control. For displacement maps, the user can alter height, facet size, and z-offset.
- Masking. By default, the alpha channel will be masked. By selecting "Color" instead of "Alpha," it is possible to mask any RGB value. The Transparent checkbox sets the masked color to transparent. The Reverse checkbox masks everything but the masked color. Blur determines the magnitude of partial masking around the masked color, and Sensitivity measures the size of the area around the color that is also masked.
- Channels. The controls for channel manipulation are located here. Invert Channels switches RGB values, so dark becomes light, blue becomes orange, etc. The Color checkbox turns all colors on and off. Specular Intensity makes the material more reflective and mirror-like. Specular Color blends the highlight color (under the Main tab of the material editor) and the texture map's color for specular reflections.
- Orientation. Rotation rotates the tiles, Offset X and Y move the tiles around on the surface of the material.:
You can place up to 4 texture images on your material.
You can specify special effects for additional textures - such as blending materials, or using the second material as a
Bump Map
Bumps Tab
Sets special procedural bump types. Each bump type has its own parameters.
The Bumps tab provides options for creating the appearance of a specific kind of surface without using displacement maps or requiring the user to provide any additional maps. The patterns offered are: Sandpaper, Rubble, Wrinkled, Marbled, and Pyramid. When one of the bump maps is checked, additional controls become available. Strength controls the appearance of depth. Scale controls the proportional size of the bumps.
See:
Procedural Bump Maps
Material Tree
The Material Tree lets you define algoritimic materials, which are with properties generated on the fly.
This feature is mostly undocumented. The best way to use it is to choose an existing material and to try to change the settings to achieve the desired effect.
Special Blends
Some materials, such as Solid Wood are created by blending several sub-textures.